Five Years of Waiting Dumbly

28 January 2009 Wednesday at 11:50 PM (Games, Memories)

Yeah. That’s the amount of time I’ve waited just to get a bunch of games made by an independent game developer whom I doubt you’ve heard of. If the word “Hamumu” rings a bell, you don’t have to read the rest of this post because you will know what I’m going to ramble about in the next few lines. If that doesn’t, be prepared to get a little Dumber.

Right, so we rewind back to the year 2000, when I was a nine-year-old who just had his ears almost completely detached by a sixtysomething-year-old man for using the wrong format in Chinese Spelling. One fine day (or night, rather), my dad came back home with a game CD stowed away in his bag, which he showed to both my sister and I. It was a collection of small games by various developers, compiled into one volume by the gaming company eGames. That was not the first time he bought an eGames compilation. Nope, this was the second one, and among all the eGames products that my family have bought back in those years, this second compilation was arguably the one that made the biggest impact on the games that I play.

So what, you may ask, was so particularly prominent in this game pack of small, low-requirement games that had such a huge impact on the kind of games I play now? Well, one of these games had an interesting name. It was called “Spooky Castle”, and it is probably the third game that I got addicted to (behind XCar: Experimental Racing and Raptor: Call of the Shadows).

Spooky Castle is a very simple game. You control a bald-headed man called Bouapha, whose objective is to enter a castle, explore it, and collect all the brains scattered throughout. That, basically, is it. Here is some gameplay footage:

However, I was still fresh off from learning how to explore the contents of a folder on my own, so after playing Spooky Castle a few times, I decided to rummage in the game’s folder, where I found a few interesting images that I cannot reproduce here due to copyright issues. The image that caught my attention the most was the one that had the words “SPISPOPD II: DR. LUNATIC” written on it, with the “DR. LUNATIC” portion in big, blue letters. That got me into wondering if Spooky Castle was a part of something bigger. For about a month, I wondered about the implication of this image. However, I did not know what the Internet was at that time, so I placed little weight on it.

Come 2004, and I was thirteen. I went back to have a look at the images I found in the data folders of Spooky Castle, when I saw another image. This one was much simpler. It was mostly blue, and the text could be split into three groups.

  1. “Hamumu Software” written at the top in big, big letters;
  2. A URL right below 1.; and
  3. The sentence “It Just Doesn’t Get Any Dumber Than This” written at the bottom in small letters.

By this time, I had already learnt how to use the Internet and what a URL was, so I decided to try out the url I found on this image, and…whoa.

What I had entered was the website of the people who made the third game that I actually took a very serious liking to. To my chagrin, Spooky Castle was not one of the games Hamumu Software sold, but my disappointment quickly faded when I started exploring the site a little. That was when I came across what would ultimately be a game that I would have over almost any other game in the world.

It’s this. Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese. I read the description, viewed the screenshots, and was determined to give the demo version a go.

From the moment I started up the demo version, I was a goner. There was no way I could stop the process of being Dumb and liking Dumb Games. The demo was so well crafted, and it exhibited some screenshots from the full version, giving eah and every one a description so well-written that I made up my mind to get a copy.

There were two little problems, though. Firstly, Hamumu Software is located in Anza, CA, while I was – and still is – located in Singapore, halfway across the planet. Secondly, the game would have cost me US$30 at the very least, which amounts to about S$55 back then – in other words, money that I don’t have. The only way I could think of getting such a game would be to visit the president of Hamumu personally and paying him up front. However, nobody had the intention of going to America. Not me, not my family.

So the only thing left was to wait and drool at the full version screenshots in the demo version.

Fast forward to now, a full half-decade later. I’m a half-adult now, and a sane one at that. Throughout the years, I’ve managed to reason with myself that there are other games that are better than Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese. However, all it took was one video that lasted one minute and thirty-seconds to completely obliterate five years of reasoning. Here it is:

Deep down, I know that I really, really want to get this game; there is no other reason for me to remember everything about it so well. This is definitely something that I know I will play over and over again for as long as technology will hold itself back to provide.

So now I find myself thinking about getting Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese again. This time, however, I’ve kicked things up a notch…because I did a mail order last Friday. And I’m not just going to attempt to buy Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese; I’m going to attempt to buy two other Dumb Games with it. If this mail order gets through, my wait will be over. If it does not, then I’ll have to wait again and agonise about losing S$115. I hope this mail order succeeds, though. I really, really, really hope it does.

Do you want to know more about Hamumu Software? Get Dumb and check the links below then.

Hamumu Software

Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese Information

Loonyland: Halloween Hill Information

Kid Mystic Information

Spooky Castle Information

You might also want to have a look at these trailers I did on my own for two Dumb Games:

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The Sun Does Not Shine on Teachers’ Day

31 August 2008 Sunday at 3:39 PM (Memories, Singapore)

In a matter of speaking, the sun rarely does shine during Teachers’ Day. For one, it always rains heavily on August afternoons here in Singapore, and for another, the name “Teachers’ Day” can really be taken literally. From my point of view, it is not a “school revisit day”, as some people may see it.

It’s very simple: when I was transferred to Coral Secondary School upon completion of the Primary School Leaving Examination, I didn’t know what to expect. The school, as well as its faculty, are complete strangers to me. Then, as the four years went by, I started to know more about the teachers; their quirks, their teaching style, everything except their personal life…and that’s perfectly all right. I’m but a student being taught under them. I have no right to delve into their personal space.

My teachers are the ones who taught me, not the school. They taught me because it was their job, and yet, because they taught me very well, I started to get used to the school itself.

However, in order for me to feel the need to revisit my secondary school yearly, they have to be there, because they are the core foundation of my sense of belonging to the school.

And this is the problem. At the start of 2008, just after my cohort completed the General Certificate of Education “Ordinary” Level Examinations, there was a major shake-up in the school’s staff. A good number of teachers who taught me, whom I admired greatly, are no longer working there. My Mathematics teacher, whom I admired the most among all the teachers who taught me, has resigned. While her resignation is beyond my control, what irks me is that the school did not mention it. At the Prize Presentation and Speech Day Ceremony earlier this year, I saw many familiar faces, but I did not see her. It was only when I asked my English teacher that I realised that she had resigned, whereas he, along with one of my Chemistry teachers, has been transferred to another school.

If they had remained in Coral Secondary School, I would be more than willing to pay them a visit on the weekday before 1 September every year. I would still feel a sense of belonging in the school because they are there. The problem is that they are not teaching there any more. With their departure from the school, my sense of belonging to the school has been severely diminished. I’ve been there before a few times over the course of this year, and yet I found myself feeling as if I was not supposed to be there.

When I first came to Coral Secondary School, I felt like a stranger, but the place became a sort of “second home” simply because the teachers who taught me went beyond what they were supposed to do. Not only did they teach, they actually cared about my welfare, as well as the welfare of all the other students they taught during their tenure with the school. If they didn’t care, I won’t be posting this right now. I’d probably be doing something else.

Even after eight months, I still sit here and wonder why the wind sucks.

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